Terry Pratchett makes a sword out of meteorites

Showing that he's not just awesome at writing books, Terry Pratchett decided to forge himself a sword after being knighted. As you do.

But believing that to be his sword, it had to be different, he found himself a field with iron ore near his home in Wiltshire, dug up 81kg of iron ore, and smelted it himself.

The 62 year-old bestselling author said "most of my life I've been producing stuff which is intangible and so it's amazing the achievement you feel when you have made something which is really real."

After creating a makeshift kiln built from clay and hay and fuelled with damp sheep manure to smelt his iron, he then tossed in "several pieces of meteorites — thunderbolt iron, you see — highly magical, you’ve got to chuck that stuff in whether you believe in it or not."

After spending some days hammering it into bars, he then took it to a blacksmith, who helped him shape it into a blade and finish it with silverwork.

Pratchett has hidden the sword in an unknown location after finishing it last year, fearing that the authorities may not appreciate his remarkable work on account of it being pointy and very sharp.

"It annoys me that knights aren’t allowed to carry their swords. That would be knife crime," he said.

via Evan, via news.com

A New Terry Pratchett Book this October!

I don't know about you guys, but I love Terry Pratchett. He's one of the few readers who actually made me lol. And yes, I said lol, not laugh-out-loud. But it's ok, cause it's the internet. Right? Right?

Anyway, his new book is called Snuff! and is centered around His Grace, His Excellency, The Duke of Ankh; Blackboard Monitor, Commander Sir Samuel Vimes. To give him his full title.

The blurb from the book reads:

"According to the writer of the best-selling crime novel ever to have been published in the city of Ankh-Morpork, it is a truth universally acknowledged that a policeman taking a holiday would barely have had time to open his suitcase before he finds his first corpse. And Commander Sam Vimes of the Ankh-Morpork City Watch is on holiday in the pleasant and innocent countryside, but not for him a mere body in the wardrobe, but many, many bodies and an ancient crime more terrible than murder. He is out of his jurisdiction, out of his depth, out of bacon sandwiches, occasionally snookered and occasionally out of his mind, but not out of guile. Where there is a crime there must be a finding, there must be a chase and there must be a punishment. They say that in the end all sins are forgiven. But not quite all..."

I'm looking forward to this. It'll be published on the 13th of October, and is the 39th Discworld novel.

via Wikipedia, and Terry Pratchett